| Jul 1, 2001 Weve finally gotten ourselves together from our trip to Europe. Wistys kittens were huge when we returned and Peti who had been staying with our friend Laurie, another Birman breeder, came home with one gorgeous kitten whom we think is a seal point female, born June 9. (Peti is also Wistys mother and does have the most beautiful kittens on earth.) The father of this kitten is our own Sunny, so he has had all the recent honors on the kitten score. Hes about to have a new team-mate: GC Heartbirs Redeemer, a lilac point boy, from our friend Barb Thurman has just arrived to share some of the studding especially for our B-blood type girls and our Sunny daughters. We have another guest in the cattery, Jorojin Santal of Tai Ming, "Jenny" a beautiful seal lynx girl, who is staying with us until her mistress can have her back. Frances Price (Tai Ming Birmans), our friend and mentor, is suffering some physical challenges right now and Jenny is her one remaining cat and personal pet. Jenny is also the mother of Tai Mings Topper, the seal lynx boy we are showing this year. Our trip to Europe included only one real day of visiting catteries. We went to three different ones in Holland and thanks go to our friend John Rudolph for arranging and hosting us and Debbie & Ted McCarthy, our red factor branch, on June 15 for a day going all over the countryside to see cats. There were some amazing ones, most notably the fertile, seal tortie male. It is extremely rare to find a seal tortie male and one who is additionally fertile and of show quality make him about one in a million. For a detailed discussion of cat genetics, see Feline Genetics. Page 3 of this actually says "Since a male has only one orange-making gene, there cannot be a male tortie. An exception to this rule is the hermaphrodite, which has an "XXY" genetic structure. Such a cat can be tortie, since it has two "X" chromosomes, but must invariably be sterile. In fact, despite the presence of male genitalia, a hermaphrodite is genetically an underdeveloped female, and may have both ovaries and testes, with neither fully functional.," Well, the Dutch boy has his functional enough -- he was chasing the girls when we saw him! We saw some other lovely seals and blues, lynx and reds. I hope that we can connect with some of these breeders to add some new lines to our cattery. We very much liked what we saw. Wistys litter is having visitors and the kittens are being deposited by their new owners. The final visit is scheduled for this coming weekend. We have also taken back a girl of our breeding, Wendy, who could no longer stay with her family. Wendy is bred and due in August. Well be looking for seals and blues from her. She is Willows sister, another wonderful Peti daughter. |
Golden Seal Birmans — Marietta, USA 
